Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister. As we are from the same county, he should be intimately familiar with all the issues I intend to raise. I compliment Senator Doherty on putting the west on the agenda. It was time this was done.

In the early 1990s, I returned from the United States, having lived there for four years. I saw an advertisement in the paper asking whether one wished to live in the west for the rest of one's life. I answered that advertisement in the affirmative. The Minister will recall the Save the West campaign by the western bishops and will recall a great man called Pól Ó Foighil and his attempts to bypass central Government and to bring funds from Europe directly to the regions and to the west in particular. I answered that advertisement and became part of his group to achieve that goal. Members now know that what he was trying to do was correct and in many ways the Government has taken on much of his vision. As that was my first foray into the political world, I wish to note his achievement and his work in that regard.

The west is a great place to live. It has natural resources that any country would envy, as well as the human resources. However, it lacks the infrastructure. It has its communities and we must continue to empower them to want to live there, to be able to stay there and do business there. This is the reason the question of infrastructure is so critical and I wish to touch briefly on roads, rail, air, broadband, energy and environment. I have much to achieve within a few minutes.

I will begin by considering the west's desirability as a place to live. The Minister will be aware the Western Development Commission recently carried out a survey in respect of the Look West campaign, in which it emerged as one of the top places to which people wanted to move. However, in respect of infrastructure, the west has been the last to get everything. The N6 is not built yet, although it is under way. The N18, which links Limerick to Galway, has now stopped and I understand the work between Gort and Oranmore is suspended.